WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HOLY?

I loved my grandmother's house. I loved the way it looked and smelled and the way it was cool and dark in the hot humid summers. I loved sitting on her front porch rocking away in one of her sturdy green rocking chairs during thunderstorms and feeling so safe!

 My grandmother's house was really nothing special... not fancy or palatial. Really very ordinary!!!

But to me, it was a treasure trove of beautiful things... unusual and old things. I spent many hours in her attic trying on her flapper wedding gown and looking through old photos and yellowed newspaper clippings. Each piled-to-the-ceiling box held mysterious things from ages past just waiting to be discovered...

Nani had the most wonderful collection of flamingo figurines I have ever seen. Big flamingos and teeny tiny flamingos... all pink and posed! And to a little girl they were breathtaking!

She collected them on her once-a-year trips to Florida. And for some odd reason they were her prized possessions.

They were set apart from all the other chachkas in her house... they were special to my grandmother and we all knew it...

In a funny way,  my grandmother's flamingos remind me of the word holy!

The Hebrew word for holy is  QODESH (kaw-doshe').

It is the the idea of something being "set apart". It also means "other than".

God is HOLY...

Because the Scripture says, "You must be holy because I am holy".

1 Peter 1:16

God is holy... set apart. But set apart or other than what? God is "set apart" from all creation, both seen and unseen. He is totally "other than" anything else... anything! 

He can not be related to in the way we relate to the world around us because he is outside of it... all of it!   He is holy!

God is perfect and pure. He is unstained by the sin of the world.  He is holy because holiness is part of His character. Holiness is who and what He is!

In my grandmother's house, her flamingos were set apart... they were special. So special that they were separate and put up high in a china cabinet just for them.  They were the only things off limit in her home. They were unlike anything else she owned.

God and my grandmother's flamingos! Such an unlikely analogy!!!! 

Now here where the comparison ends... and this is so interesting...

God is holy and He wants us to be holy too!

He wants us to be "set apart" from this world too!  We cannot be like God and be "other than" the world in a physical sense... but we can be "set apart" and "other than" in a spiritual one!

God calls us to be SANCTIFIED... a Christian word for the process of becoming holy.  Being holy is a lifelong process. It is the process of looking and acting less and less like the base things of this world and acting and looking more and more like Jesus.

God wants us to live for Him and do His will and act like Him in all situations.  It is a commitment! A big and wonderful commitment!

He asks us to be holy... to give up our selfish and sinful ways and live like Jesus did when he was on earth.

If we have bowed our knee to Jesus... giving our lives to the Savior of our souls... we have already stared the process of holiness!

Is it a process of denying self... you bet! Not only denying selfish ways but putting those ways to death. Letting them no longer have power or purpose in our lives. Sanctification, becoming holy, is the process of looking like our Lord.

That is what holy means.

We are to be holy and look like our Father, God... because He is holy!

When my grandmother went to heaven her precious flamingo collection was split up and many members of her family got a prized flamingo! Because it was so special to her, my flamingo has become so special to me too!

Someday, when I have grandbabies, this funny little figurine will be a wonderful object lesson in God's holiness.